by S E Holmes
The floors were black-and-white marble with beautifully woven runners extending their length. Expensive, tasteful artworks decorated the walls on either side. It was hard to believe this now belonged to me. Comprehension brought on goosebumps: this was Daniel’s house much more than my own. He had actually lived his happiest times here. It was little wonder his shoulders hunched and his jaw clenched. Being here must cause him untold grief.
We stopped at a door just outside the kitchen, oriented towards the water, and headed down steep steps carved of stone into the dry cool of a food-laden cellar. We passed hung ham and cheese rounds, bins of potatoes, bunches of herbs and a row of stainless steel industrial fridges, until another door at its farthest point, lined with many padlocks and barred for good measure. Daniel magicked a set of boltcutters from within the folds of his coat and made short work of the security.
We descended many more stairs that became ever more treacherous and mildewed, the air pungent with fungus. They took us deep within the earth, gradually giving way to a packed soil tunnel sparkly with nitre, the ground mud-slicked and uneven. Water dripped constantly. It was so very dark and cave-like. Things seethed and scuttled beyond the puny circle of our torches. The oval narrowed, heading down at a precipitous angle and it was all I could to keep my footing on the slimed surface. Soon, even Daniel was muck-ridden.
To my burgeoning unease, I added heart palpations and the cold sweat of claustrophobia. Allayver no longer calmed my nerves and the full force of the evil Finesse had brought here stabbed through my sneakers with every pace, strong enough to override the Keepers’ murmuring and Smith’s reassuring hand at my elbow. I hyperventilated, my terror raising more goosebumps.
“What is this horrible place?”
“We’ll get this done and be out before you know it, Bear.” Smithy’s voice broke through the fright. I stumbled on in the forbidding dark, barely aware.
“Obviously this is some design of the former Keeper. This is as far as the tunnels go.”
A dead end. I gritted my teeth and laboured not to let the words steal what little control I had left. Daniel and Smithy inspected the rough-hewn walls with their lights, propelling me towards the front of a small, dank cavern. The roof was so low, they had to crouch. Smithy cracked glow sticks and scattered them about, painting the unpleasant hole in fluorescent green.
“Stealth will enhance your senses,” Daniel said. “Feel for the Key. I know you are scared, but we should not linger here, it is not safe.”
By ‘not safe’, I understood Daniel meant ‘trapped’ if it came to a fight. I had no desire to stay here longer than necessary.
I began the process I’d drilled with Bea and blotted the awful cave from awareness. Purging everything irrelevant, I placed hands against the barrier of dirt. Sensation almost knocked me flat. Bernadette stood before me healthy and radiant, her words lucid: “You have found the Key, second of the lost articles. The third beckons: Alexandra’s Sceptre. In union there is salvation. Luck and love, Winsome Light, Last Keeper of the Crone’s Stone… Take good care of Poe.”
Poe? “We have to dig.”
I was about to come back to reality, when an odd tremor tugged my perception. The earth drummed its meaning: vegetation squelched under foot, branches snapped, a girl’s ragged panting, her clothing torn as she zigzagged murky forest.
“Someone’s sprinting, heading here … They’re not alone.”
I felt the fugitive’s panic course through me. Her pursuer gained ground every moment, while her energy flagged. A savage howl lanced the dusk, too close. She sobbed as she ran, a ravenous beast at her heels.
Next to me, Smithy dug; a man possessed with a retractable spade. Daniel paced as best he could in a crouch, demanding updates every other second. I remained with my hands firmly planted against the ground, straining for the runner’s progress.
“I can’t feel exactly what it is that hunts her. It’s a black void, nasty and ruthless. Its growl is very deep. There are three of them rolling through the woods like a wave of fear. There’s a man with them … as corrupt … and utterly mad. His intent—” I could not go on, his atrocity poisoned my lips. “We have to help her.”
“Malachi and his war-hounds. Finesse is truly careless to let him loose without supervision. He is barely controllable. I do not understand why she is not with him.” Daniel stopped wearing a rut in the floor. “Who is he chasing?”
I knew. “Maya.”
“I cannot let her set foot here. She will wake the Echoes. I must find her first.”
“Go,” Smithy said. “I’ve got this.”
Daniel twirled from us and was gone. Smithy broke another light-stick and thrust it into the yawning hole he’d cleared, his arms caked with black silt to his elbows. Beetles and worms and spiders with twiggy legs and feelers churned in its meagre glow. Water dribbled through fissures to form a widening pool of brown sludge on the bottom. He sat back on his haunches.
“It’s sprouting more and more leaks. I think I’m close to the riverbank and if I dig much further, it’ll flood.”
“Can I get in there?”
“Be careful.” He positioned behind me, gripping my ankles in case of collapse.
“Really? I was leaning towards reckless.”
Smithy laughed, an incongruent sound in this bleak rut. “Even here, you manage sarcasm.”
I squirmed in as far as I could, ignoring the writhing bugs around me. The fleeing girl had my full quota of terror. I forced my hand through sucking clay, crawling things scraping my skin, revulsion in my belly. I pushed until my shoulder felt as though it might snap, the tips of my fingers brushing cold hardness. Just a little more … I edged forward, jamming myself against the tunnel limit, my neck painfully tilted. Suddenly, the whole edifice gave way in a deluge of water, pebbles and grit.
Smithy swore and began pulling me out. No. I must get the Key. I kicked my legs and sculled the quagmire, spitting foul liquid and dirt. A torrent of water poured in as the tunnel above disintegrated, filling my mouth and battering my face. I coughed and flailed, it was difficult to stay in place against the cascading swamp and crumbling earth. My torch was reefed from me, the glow sticks eddying away to plunge us into absolute darkness. I closed my eyes and used my senses to feel for the Key.
Smith frantically shovelled as the walls caved in, threatening to bury me alive, my worst fears come to fruition. I ploughed my feet and lurched ahead, my chest burning as my skin finally grazed slimed timber. I tried to take hold of its flatness, but could not gain purchase, before the floor of the shaft gave way. A frigid whirlpool engulfed me. Smithy speared himself next to me, gripping my waist as we pitched headfirst into the watery void, somersaulting in turbulence.
My eyes snapped open to a spinning vista of roiling silt and floundering limbs. I blinked against the sting, bubbles escaping my mouth, and had no idea which way was up and which was down. Smithy popped into view, gesturing madly for the surface, his hair haloed about his face. I shook my head as, from the corner of my vision, a flat box pulsing with the Key’s power tail-spun into weedy depths. I pointed and scissored downwards, while the current towed me towards the ever-widening chasm beneath the riverbank, my starved lungs screaming. Once the Key hit the thick nest of rushes and gnarled tree roots it would take us forever to find it again, and I was too worried for Maya.
Smithy stroked by my side, a hunting blade in one hand and his face set in grim determination. He knifed through an olive maze of throttling vines and reached the box, seizing it just before a large shape bulleted between us, snubby snout agape, its studded tail lashing my middle and spinning me about. Its beady little eyes flashed by too close; alligators always seemed to be grinning. I didn’t share the joke, whirling to track the gator’s progress as it turned to make another pass. I was weak from lack of air and the fatigue of excess adrenaline. But having barely made it from my buried-alive phobia, I was damned sure another would not win the day.
Smith swam up next to me, his
gaze fixed on the rapidly approaching reptile, his knife at the ready. Its prehistoric jaws yawning to best show butchering teeth, the huge reptile swished serpentine, a sleek projectile gathering speed for impact. The urgency to breathe grew sharp in my lungs. Smith nudged me behind him, but I grappled him in oxygen-starved panic and we dematerialised, swooping in a fountain dumped onto the shore. I sprawled on my back, heaving and bedraggled, and stared dumbfounded at the star-smattered night sky. Smithy lurched to a seating position, hacking swamp water.
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Nor did I,” I gasped.
Cocking his head to listen, he pried the box apart with the knife removing a flattish object wrapped in oilcloth and tossing its container aside. “Something or someone’s triggered the Echoes.”
He hurriedly inserted the Key, still in its oilcloth, into a pocket on my cargoes and Velcroed the flap securely. The force of the Key pulsated against my thigh, but as much as I wanted to take it out and look at it, concern for the fleeing girl dictated. He leaped up and pulled me with him. The denied alligator grumbled throaty anger in the background, splashing back beneath the watery depths.
“It would have made a nice belt.” Trust Smith to mourn a lost chance at wrestling an alligator. “The Sentinels are coming. We have to find somewhere to hide.”
We ran for the back door. All around us, the sound of roaring wind coursed the night. Or was it scuttling claws?
“I hate this house.” We were drenched and filthy. I’d lost my cap and glasses in the turmoil. Poised by the back door, he pushed soggy strands from my forehead, tucking them behind my ears. “There’s something wrong here. It’s growing, getting stronger.”
It was like the warning rise of ozone before a storm, a portent of towering thunderheads. Only these clouds rained doom.
“I feel it. Everything’s warping. Unnatural.”
I took Smith’s hand and used Concealment to hide our muddy tracks, re-entering the house. With my heightened senses, seeing was easy. “There’s no one alive in here, but I detect movement,” I whispered, my skin prickling.
The present wavered and blurred, making me dizzy. A Vivaldi melody wove through the rooms of days gone by. This had been a subdued place until Daniel’s arrival. Tentatively at first, Raphaela and Daniel had reached for each other, both ensnared by forces beyond their control, bound in empty, loveless lives. Their gradual reawakening played in my mind, resonating with laughter and new joy, amplified by shared histories of loss and insufferable grief. But guilt and the most damaging emotion of all, shame, wreathed their happiness in thorns.
“Stay in the here and now, stay with me.” Smithy squeezed my hand and I came back to myself.
He hadn’t bothered to sheath his knife and it glittered in his upraised fist. We rounded the corner adjacent to the horrid cellar, and proceeded through a spacious foyer with a sweeping staircase facing a double-doored entrance, the curvaceous walls crammed with more art, sculptures and a vintage grandfather clock.
We jogged right to the front parlour, French antiques complimenting more artworks in the restricted light. An ornate mirror over an enormous fireplace reflected the rococo lounge I knew too much about that was back in a warehouse in Sydney. My head spun and I could not untangle the past from this reality. Heavy drapes covered adjacent ceiling-to-floor windows that originally framed the beauty of the surrounding forest, but now the vista of Finesse’s rampage showed through a narrow parting.
Outside, the house crawled with gangrel beasts, their phlegmy growls and hisses a razor at my throat. And in the distance, the ghostly repetition of Billie’s last stand played out, a terrible skirmish of flashing explosions and howling monsters.
The house offered up its memories. In the golden ambience of twilight, those same curtains thrown wide, Daniel entered with a wine goblet in hand. He called, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” Hidden beneath a low table, littered with a half-filled carafe and the remnants of a meal, Raphaela giggled.
“That’s your hiding spot? And you call yourself a Keeper.”
Raphaela freed herself and stood, gazing warmly at him. “Maybe I wanted to be found.”
“Bear.” Smithy grabbed my upper arms and shook me.
“I need allayver. My grip on the presence is slipping.”
He frowned, seeking the fluid-filled ampoule I wore around my neck, next to the Delta. “So … where is it?”
I patted for my necklace, holding up the chain with a sinking realisation. “The vial must have come free in the water.”
“Find a hiding spot.” He gave me that ‘dangerous’ look Andie had warned me about.
“No,” I whispered. “Not without you.”
“Look where we are. How can we get out of here without your full protection? I’ve got to look for those drugs.”
A wicked presence obliterated all else in my mind. “Malachi’s here.”
“Wrap yourself in the curtains.”
“It’s stupid,” I hissed. “You’ll never find that vial. I’ll try harder.”
“I mean it. Stay here and stay out of sight.”
Smith tore himself from me, conflict twisting his features. Wet footprints signalled his course, my shielding powers waning under the onslaught.
“No!” But he’d already gone. If anything happened to him I’d never forgive myself.
Absent Smithy’s influence, voices swelled to merge with my overriding dread for him. The atmosphere of wrongness intensified, jerking me between time periods like a psychic tennis ball. I struggled to stay alert and ignore the migraine knocking at my temples. I moved to the curtains and peeked out.
The yard was a maelstrom of whipped dust. An otherworldly keening rose and fell in the bluster, its creepiness setting my teeth on edge. In the background, I heard the feral baying of Malachi’s hounds. Abruptly, the Echoes were silent. A foul miasma hung over the land, wafting aside for a looming shape that coalesced into a man. He stood for a moment with his legs planted apart and hands on his hips, as if a king surveying a conquest.
“I know you’re in there, small one. My friends patrol the back and you know what hunts here. Come out, pretty petal, and I promise not to hurt you. I will protect you from them.”
His thick lips curled and he spoke in the gravelly timbre of a smoker, a gold front tooth flashing. He was immense, all bulked shoulders and chest, the arms of a silverback gorilla. His black hair slicked his forehead in glistening coils to the nape of his neck. Pitch eyes pierced from under sleepy lids. He wore faded denims, artfully ripped in places, and a white mesh vest promoted his imposing musculature. Scuffed cowboy boots and a gold earring completed the picture. He exuded the power of a freak-show strong man, and I guessed many of his victims had fallen for his sly charm and virile allure.
“Well,” he drawled, “never say you weren’t offered a chance.”
He advanced upon the front porch. I shimmied into a cocoon of hung velvet, peeking out and trying to still my ragged breathing. The door shook once and burst inwards.
“Honey, I’m home!” He crunched into the hallway and came into view, framed in the entry to the parlour. A skittered click-clack preceded the appearance of several pallid Sentinels gripping the ornate ceiling cornices upside down. They sniffed moistly, probing the air for tell-tale scent. I shuddered on recall of the midnight fight in my bedroom, wishing for a spear. Finally, a black-faced, slavering grey hound the size of a small pony padded to heel beside his master. “Very tasteful,” he nodded, inspecting the furniture in the glare of his flashlight. “Ding dong, the Keeper is dead.”
Chuckling, he stepped into the lounge room. He hadn’t seen me yet, and I instinctively shrank from his approach. His attention fixed on the floor and he swung his head to track Smithy’s puddles.
“Big shoes for my baby doll to fill,” he sneered. “Did you bring some help?” He snapped his fingers and the dog stood at attention. “Find!”
He was going after Smithy. How dare the big oaf.
Rage was the cure for the rabble in my brain. I ignored them all, even shutting out Smithy.
Bear? He sensed my instability. What are you doing?
He had a point. What could I possibly do against that vast man, his brute of a dog, and the pellucid horrors pouring forth into Raphaela’s lobby?
Something monumentally stupid, that’s what.
Twenty-Eight
The van raced along the parade, very nearly tipping as it took the final corner at full speed. They just managed to avoid the police, slowing to what seemed a crawl as four cruisers whizzed by, sirens blaring and motors whining. Bracing himself with his left hand grasping the back of the seat, Hud checked for a pulse in Fortescue’s neck. The old boy’s head flopped about on every bump. His skin was the shade of bleached putty.
“Slow down, Ty. I can’t get a pulse!”
Priscilla bounced about next to Fortescue. Her objections grew more strident under the tape and she kicked at Hud’s shins. He ignored her, clicking Fortescue’s belt free to manoeuvre him prostrate across the rearmost bench seat. He began CPR, worried that pressure on Fortescue’s ribs would do further damage. Did he have a punctured lung, or had he sustained a life-threatening head wound? More likely a heart attack: elderly gents shouldn’t indulge in bare-knuckle fist fights. This was trauma beyond Hud’s rudimentary medical skills.
“We need to go to the nearest ED.”
“Andie said Mrs Paget made her swear not to involve outsiders, no matter what.”
“Yeah, well ‘what’ won’t be good, that’s for sure.”
After several minutes of controlled effort, Fortescue sucked a lungful and cracked his eyelids. Hud slumped to the floor between seats, so relieved he could cry. His patient called feebly for vitaver, which Hud held to his lips. He took a swig and waved it away.